Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

Well, of course I could use ju5t1n-h's ... I think all of us have those moments!

However, how about that moment when you nail a tricky bar - or when you first recognize that OP 122 N 987, the piece you've been reading and stumbling through, is actually something you've heard a zillion times...and now YOU are playing it!!!!

In a word: Delighted.

_________________________ XVIII-XXXVISometimes I try to progress faster than I am ready for.SwissMsFollow your teacher's instructions and practice wisely/much, and you'll soon wonder how you ever found it hard. BobPicklePerformance anxiety: make it part of your daily routine and deal with it...Cope! zrtf90

Well, of course I could use ju5t1n-h's ... I think all of us have those moments!

However, how about that moment when you nail a tricky bar - or when you first recognize that OP 122 N 987, the piece you've been reading and stumbling through, is actually something you've heard a zillion times...and now YOU are playing it!!!!

In a word: Delighted.

I think I'd use 'Relieved'

haha I'm not actually a pessimist but I have to be up in 5 hours for work and I'm not the slightest bit tired! Need to buy a concrete pillow

I will separate "practicing" from "playing". When I am practicing I am focussed, getting work done. When I sit down and just play, I am emoting and just letting the music take me where ever it goes. It is liberating and thrilling.

Sheer joy! I try to avoid piano when I'm getting ready to go to work. I forget about everything once I sit in front of the piano. In fact after reading you guys post I wandered to piano and missed my 1:1 with my boss.

_________________________
Solo - Rachmaninoff Elegie Op 3 #1, Schumann Op 12 Warum, Grillen and a few short pieces by various composersCollaboration - Concerto in C for Oboe and orchestra attributed to Haydn edited by Evelyn Rosewell and some duets

Hmmm....I want to know what Nancy said...I don't like to describe my playing for two reasons. One I don't think I would pick the right words and two I don't know what others are feeling but I can share their words....distinctive, delicate, relaxing. I can agree with those words.

Personally, I have used the word transcendent to describe my music experience. When I get that feeling in front of an audience, it becomes connection, a feeling of being at peace with the world. Another analogy, it is as if people are like tuning forks, and when we hit the right note, or sequence of notes, our bodies, minds and spirits resonate with the music. This fits with a goal I derived from a John Coltrane quote:My music is a spiritual expression of who I am

Like JimF writes, my range of emotions is wide. I expect it is that way for a lot of people. Some writers say they like having the completed work, but the actual process of producing that work can be tedious, discouraging, frustrating, headache producing and worse.

When I'm practicing, I feel fullfilled, more at peace with myself and my place in the world than at any other time in my day. At the keys, I feel I'm where I belong and doing what I'm supposed to be doing. All's right with my world. I feel righteous.

When practicing, I can feel focused, searching, questioning, amazed, energized. Sometimes calm and almost meditative; I feel a softening, like I'm sinking into the sound, my mind coming to a state of rest and the only sound is the piano, everything else is silent. (That's a very hard state for me to ever achieve, for a variety of reasons. There's a lot of noise in my life, and in my mind.) Sometimes I'm simply thrilled by the fact that my fingers are starting to feel like the movement is natural, or that I got the cross-over without thinking about it, or the right fingering, or the tempo. That feeling that I think most of you mean by playing. I always feel like I'm still just practicing, not really playing yet. But I see/feel glimmers of what I will achieve!

I can also feel frustrated, lost, confused, confounded, groping in the dark, fumble-fingered, 10-thumbed, aghast at my ability to repeat the same ($&^^@!! mistakes over and over. Also, tired, stupid and lame-brained.

But — and I think it's important to say this — I never, ever feel completely fed-up with it all. I never despair. Even in my worst moments, I know that I'm only feeling a momentary frustration and that, no matter how many times I feel it, that's not the overall experience. Playing/practicing is more positive than negative. I know I'm making progress, albeit slowly, and that one day I will truly play the piano with pleasure and power and understanding.

I might be an oddball here. I don't play well but feel good by just pressing the keys to make sound. Don't you guys feel certain amount of sensual pleasure by just playing. I mean pressing the key, feeling the vibration of the strings beyond...

_________________________
Solo - Rachmaninoff Elegie Op 3 #1, Schumann Op 12 Warum, Grillen and a few short pieces by various composersCollaboration - Concerto in C for Oboe and orchestra attributed to Haydn edited by Evelyn Rosewell and some duets

I might be an oddball here. I don't play well but feel good by just pressing the keys to make sound. Don't you guys feel certain amount of sensual pleasure by just playing. I mean pressing the key, feeling the vibration of the strings beyond...

I get frustrated easily when I play, like most people here. My frustration comes from the fact that I am not (yet?) physically capable of producing on the piano all of the delightful music that is in my head. Sometimes, I doubt that I will ever get there at all.

But then, when a piece I've been working on is starting to come together, and I no longer need to think about the notes or the rhythm because they've become pretty much ingrained in my muscle memory, the piece of music I'm playing becomes like an empty canvas, upon which I can express emotions that are difficult to express any other way.

I have a difficult time controlling my emotions. They overwhelm me, seemingly out of nowhere. As such, I can be positively euphoric one day, but ready to jump off the nearest bridge the next. That's the kind of thing I'm better off not saying out loud to anyone. But when I sit down at the piano, and I have a piece that qualifies as an 'empty canvas', then it finds an out.

In a nutshell, that is why I know I will be playing for the rest of my life. That is why I dared to make the leap when someone else bought me a €20.000 grand, and expected me to pay him back. Music is a balm for my soul, both in the heights of joy, and in the depths of despair.

The following is a snippet I wrote in 1984 about playing the flute in Arches National Park, having fun with the complex echoes returned by massive walls of red rock. I am not there yet with the piano, but there are little moments with familiar pieces when this delicious balance returns to remind me why I continue to work at this... despite all the frustrations of starting late in life:

My vision soared; the shackles fell. I played with a smooth complexity unmatched before or since, toying with echoes, flirting with wind, seeking and quickly finding that precise balance between too much and too little attention. I became a focused listener, absorbed in the sound without fully realizing that I was the one making it, guiding it gently with humor and expectation. "Everything in music must be at once surprising and expected," said Beethoven, and I was stunned to observe that something pouring from my own spirit could indeed be both.

Yeah... my spirit. Not my intellect. That was the key! I was listening, not playing -- the flutist was someone else: a musician reacting to my fantasies, a psychic puppet, a built-in minstrel subject to my every whim. I was aware of Judith's soft presence, but knew not the self-consciousness of "performance."

The subtlety grew; the sound became an impressionistic image of the land around me -- a synesthesia made tangible. It had no idiom, no key, no tonic. Little tensions appeared and then resolved themselves like micro-sonatas, but the music was less that than a documentation of magic, a moment-to-moment realization of the possibilities contained in consciousness.

The following is a snippet I wrote in 1984 about playing the flute in Arches National Park, having fun with the complex echoes returned by massive walls of red rock. I am not there yet with the piano, but there are little moments with familiar pieces when this delicious balance returns to remind me why I continue to work at this... despite all the frustrations of starting late in life:

My vision soared; the shackles fell. I played with a smooth complexity unmatched before or since, toying with echoes, flirting with wind, seeking and quickly finding that precise balance between too much and too little attention. I became a focused listener, absorbed in the sound without fully realizing that I was the one making it, guiding it gently with humor and expectation. "Everything in music must be at once surprising and expected," said Beethoven, and I was stunned to observe that something pouring from my own spirit could indeed be both.

Yeah... my spirit. Not my intellect. That was the key! I was listening, not playing -- the flutist was someone else: a musician reacting to my fantasies, a psychic puppet, a built-in minstrel subject to my every whim. I was aware of Judith's soft presence, but knew not the self-consciousness of "performance."

The subtlety grew; the sound became an impressionistic image of the land around me -- a synesthesia made tangible. It had no idiom, no key, no tonic. Little tensions appeared and then resolved themselves like micro-sonatas, but the music was less that than a documentation of magic, a moment-to-moment realization of the possibilities contained in consciousness.

>> My vision soared; the shackles fell. I played with a smooth complexity unmatched before or since, toying with echoes, flirting with wind, seeking and quickly finding that precise balance between too much and too little attention. ...>>

Nomadness, that is some beautiful prose. I am another fluter, though I am more of a hack than a musician on flute because I started so late and put so little time into it. Overall, I find the wind instruments to be more pure, than my digital piano. The breath has a lot to do with it.

Thank you so much for the kind words, Saranoya and Sand Tiger! It was a moment of passion, and I'm so glad I took the time to write about it... such things can be terribly fleeting and remembered later only as vague impressions.

I do wish I were often in that zone on the piano; the flute was deeply familiar but only by ear, and I never started to learn to read music until I was 54 (the same time I started with the piano). It is slow going still, six years later.

Somewhere in there, I got on a Satie kick and taught myself the first four Gnossiennes, and I never tire of them. Although I do have a few four-chord wonders and a few other pieces under my fingers, only Satie can take me to that place where the analytical intellect finally gets out of the way and lets the music reflect emotion. (I suspect a lot of other things would do that too, but I can't play them yet!)

I honestly couldn't say at any moment in those pieces what chord I'm playing; I'd have to stop, switch gears, think about it, and completely lose my place. From a pedagogical perspective, I suspect this is not a good thing, but I don't really care... the fact that I can enjoy that magic as a relative newbie on the keyboard gives me enough hope to continue, and that's all that matters.

I'm now living aboard a sailboat, and building a piano into the lab/studio desk.

Warm cheers from Nomadness, and a toast of recognition to Saranoya... very well said up the page there, just before my post! And Sand Tiger, you're right... there is an intimacy in the breath that I can't really even imagine ever finding through my fingers. Good point...

Nomadness- that was sublime. I don't think I've ever hit anything like with music I've played, or been a part of playing...but is is lovely to imagine that day!

I am adding a new word "calm".

I'm learning a new piece, which is very light, sweet, delicate.Even though there are parts that I haven't quite got the swing of, I find this piece calming.

(Schumann's "Melody" Op 60, N1)

_________________________ XVIII-XXXVISometimes I try to progress faster than I am ready for.SwissMsFollow your teacher's instructions and practice wisely/much, and you'll soon wonder how you ever found it hard. BobPicklePerformance anxiety: make it part of your daily routine and deal with it...Cope! zrtf90

Nomadness, what a beautiful thought! I would love to experience such feeling.

Saranoya, I can somewhat relate to you. Years ago when I came back to piano, I was in not so great situation. I felt bad about breathing air because i did not feel worthy to live. Looking back its not that devastating but a divirce in a foreign land for this spoiled girl was too much to bear. I got married with an American college teacher (an irresponsible & violent person) without waiting to graduate Japanese college! So I wound up becoming a minimum wage worker here. I felt miserable every day. I did not want go home to face my tiger mon either! Then one day I heard Chopin in a movie. Can't remember what it was unfortunately. It just permeated into my soul. I sneaked into Arizona State University one day and played the piano. I was thrilled that I could still remember my childhood pieces! Let me say that it was the beginning of all the good things happened. At least it was the only beautiful moment in my life at that time. I feel immensely grateful that I'm alive and have music with me.

_________________________
Solo - Rachmaninoff Elegie Op 3 #1, Schumann Op 12 Warum, Grillen and a few short pieces by various composersCollaboration - Concerto in C for Oboe and orchestra attributed to Haydn edited by Evelyn Rosewell and some duets